Your Resource to Manufacturing 4.0

Built in Drawing Tools

Considering that Scout Systems started as a work instruction software, we originally were more focussed on the functionality for the operators, and less artsy design capability. However customers asked for more design tools, and we listened.

Watch out, Microsoft Paint - we’re coming for you!

All joking aside, we wanted to implement these design features without cluttering or overwhelming our users. So let’s take a second and review what is now available to your documentation team.

Instruction Text Toolbar

At the bottom of the work instruction image you will now see 4 icons, let’s start on the one to the far left. When you select this button (Text Editor) it will allow you to work with your text instructions. Off to the right you will see the Instructions section as you had previously, but now you have far more control to change the color, size, and font.

We aren’t expecting you to write ransom notes like this, but you could if you wanted!

Crop and Rotate

If you use your cell phone as your camera for work instructions you may know that they image file often is embedded with Portrait or Landscape. This can be very annoying when you upload the work instruction image and it is 90 degrees rotated. Now, thanks to the Crop & Rotate toolbar, you can resize your image and correct that rotation. Just make sure to hit that save button once you are satisfied with the position and size of your image.

Drawing

For those of you that want to make your work instructions even more clear, you can now draw shapes over your image.

Following the theme of not over cluttering, you will notice the toolbar will change based on the shape selected - so as you experiment, pay attention to your options until it becomes second nature. If you design a specific shape that you want to use multiple times, right click on it and you will see the option Duplicate (among others) to make your documentation process go even faster.

The most difficult part that we have found in our early training sessions is that if your color selection is on Transparent, you might lose your shape in the drawing. If you are having a difficult time with this (or with some of the other big changes we made) feel welcome to give us a call or email and someone at Scout Systems would be happy to give you a lesson.